


Visit

by Linderosse



Category: Gintama
Genre: Actually; just give me more Zura overall; thanks, Angst, Can be interpreted as GinZura, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feels, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Infant Shouyou, Just two bros talkin' about their past in a secluded inn, We need more Zura and Gintoki interactions, We need more Zura and Shouyou interactions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:07:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29027703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linderosse/pseuds/Linderosse
Summary: Gintoki is staying at an inn with the infant reincarnation of Shoyo. Katsura pays them a visit.A missing scene from the two year timeskip.
Relationships: Katsura Kotarou & Sakata Gintoki, Katsura Kotarou & Yoshida Shouyou, Sakata Gintoki & Yoshida Shouyou
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	Visit

Gintoki sprints through town at full speed. Armed guards have surrounded the quaint inn he’s staying at— he knocks their guns aside with practiced ease and bludgeons them unconscious with his wooden sword, using the motion to spin himself further towards the inn's entrance.

The rumors he’d heard in the marketplace ring in his head.

“New Prime Minister’s here… carrying out a raid… Southwest Inn… someone suspicious was staying there?”

Gintoki knows why. The Tendoushuu are back. They’ve no doubt wrung connections out of the new government and are playing with politicicans like pawns on a gameboard, and they’ve found Gintoki. But that’s not an issue. The thought that blanks his mind out in white static, that draws gasping breaths out of him that aren’t just from the exertion of sprinting here from the marketplace, is that they know who he has with him. They raided the inn, even though Gintoki was at the marketplace. Gintoki isn’t their target. They’re targeting _him_.

The child. The infant who might be Gintoki’s doom but was once his savior. Gintoki envisions the Tendoushuu’s claws tearing at that soft, pale hair; those wide, guileless eyes. He can’t let that happen. Not again.

Gintoki can hardly breathe past the panic in his lungs. He takes the stairs three at a time. The kind old lady he’d asked to watch over the infant is nowhere in sight as Gintoki barrels into the dank, musty room he'd rented at half-price. His sword is at the ready; a growl rises from his throat. A dark figure wearing a sleek, shaded outfit lurks over the infant’s cot. Gintoki nearly snaps right then and there, but the figure with its long jet-black hair turns around, and an oh-so-familiar voice issues forth—

“Gintoki?”

Gintoki freezes. The tension thrums in him like a second heartbeat, and then, all at once, breaks into pure, sweet relief.

“Zura.” He says it like a breath rushing from his lungs.

His sword hand drops, a marionette’s arm with the strings cut. He can see behind his old friend into the cot. The child is fine. Of course. This is Zura. Zura is the sort to ask before he borrows your colored pencils, and then return them in perfect condition when he’s done. Not like a certain short angry villain they both know, or a certain airheaded space merchant, or anyone other than Pattsuan, really. Gintoki’s thoughts spiral away into distraction. It’s been about a year since he last saw Pattsuan or Kagura. Or Zura, or any of the others. He’s gotten used to silence and forgetting.

“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura,” Zura intones with the practice of many, many years of repetition. Those familiar words drag Gintoki fully back into the present. Zura's wearing a stupid fake mustache, and he pulls it off now and shoves it into his pocket, revealing the fact that he hasn't changed at all in all this time. Still, Gintoki’s blood is rushing through him at speeds that are almost audible. There’s a familiar roaring in his ears.

Zura’s brows pinch together. “Gintoki. Gintoki, are you—“

Gintoki is wheezing, slumped but standing. A bead of sweat drips onto the ripped floor mats. Zura takes a step towards him, away from the cot where the child rests. Gintoki realizes distractedly that the other is wearing a fancy foreign suit— hadn’t he always hated those? Zura reaches a hand out to him. When the hand falls on Gintoki’s shoulder, all of Gintoki’s adrenaline drains away. He sags into Zura’s familiar hold, and Zura— steady, reliable Zura— closes the distance to support him, keep him upright. They take up their old roles as brothers-in-arms without hesitation.

“Are you alright, Gintoki?”

“Mngh.” Gintoki presses a hand to his forehead and concentrates on the moss growing tenaciously in the corner of the dingy room. Zura waits in silent sympathy until visions of the battlefield vacate their residences in Gintoki’s mind. Honestly, memories like that are terrible tenants. They should at least pay Gin-san some rent if they’re going to stay with him for so long.

“Why’re you here?” Gintoki slurs after a bit.

Zura’s eyes flash to the cot and then back to gaze at dull silver hair. “I’m the Prime Minister now.”

Gintoki leans more heavily on Zura. Figures. No one else could choose an alias as inane as the one he’d heard passerby call the new Prime Minister. He coughs and steadies himself, forcefully dispelling the last vestiges of his panic, though he’s still supported by Zura’s arms, one on his elbow and another at his shoulder.

“That doesn’t answer my question. And, what, did you want me to congratulate you? You’re not gonna get anything done there, Zura, there’s too much tension, right after all that crap with Utsuro. No one would trust any leader that took up the mantle right now. Let alone a stupid wig-headed ex-revolutionary.”

Zura sighs. "It's not Zura, it's Katsura. And I know. There are better ways to change this country than by seizing control right out of a power vacuum. This isn’t my end goal. I’m merely clearing the way for others.”

“Hah. Clearing the way, are you? Unblocking the country’s pipes? Maybe you do deserve congratulations; you’ve finally become the plumber you were always meant to be. Should I start calling you Prime Minister Katsurio the Third?“

“It’s not Prime Minister Katsurio the Third, it’s Katsura.” Zura blinks. “Why am I only the third? Who were the other two?”

“Your left ball, then your right ball, and I bet the current Prime Minister is probably just your unwashed di—“

“Gintoki, the rating of this fic isn’t quite enough for you to mention things like that. What will readers say?” Zura stands straighter, closes his eyes, and submerges himself in one of his delusions. “Because of the incorrect ratings, readers will boycott all of this shitty fanfic author’s shitty works, and then boycott this fanfiction site, and soon people will report the site to the government’s censorship department and get the whole fanfiction site blocked in their country and people all over the world will get angry and riot, and the poor fanfic author-san will never find true love—”

“Oi, oi, isn’t that an entirely different controversy you’re plagiarizing from there? And did you just slip in an insult to the fanfic author in the middle of that speech? You did, didn’t you? That’s a death flag, you know.”

“It’s not death flag, it’s Katsura. And I won’t be taken out so easily by the fanfic author.”

His gaze shifts back to the cot where the infant lies nearly silent, breaths frail but regular. It's a brief glance, but Gintoki can see it.

“Or by anyone else,” Zura adds quietly.

Zura makes sure that Gintoki can stand on his own, then slowly removes himself from the other man. He clasps his hands together in front of him and Gintoki knows with the certainty of decades that Zura’s trying to tuck his hands into the sleeves of his haori, only to find a suit there instead.

“Gintoki.” Zura’s voice is soft. “I know what I’m doing, I promise.”

Gintoki closes his eyes. “I know you do.”

The bundle in the cot makes a small noise. They turn to it in unison.

“I’ve been using my network of informants to collect rumors about the Tendoushuu and Utsuro,” Zura says. “I heard that a suspicious silver-haired samurai had been seen with—“

He stops, and his voice breaks at the end as he asks his next question.

“Is he really…”

“Yeah,” Gintoki replies wearily. He can almost see the cogs turning in Zura’s head. Gintoki considers perhaps that when he burst in, Zura had been weighing the sword he wears at his belt against the sin of taking an innocent child’s life. But Zura's the responsible, careful sort. He once broke one of Gintoki’s colored pencils on accident before returning it and then cried about it for days. Zura, of all people, shouldn’t have to bear the burden of deciding what to do with the child. Of course, the world isn’t fair, and Zura is invested in this. Still, Gintoki can trust that Zura will always return his color pencils unbroken, if at all possible.

“Can I hold him?” Zura murmurs.

“Why’re you even asking me? It’s not like I’m going to stop you.”

The infant breathes in and out; while asleep, only the slow rise and fall of his chest signals that he's alive. Zura reaches into the cot and lifts the infant. He’s awkward at first, but quickly gains assurance as he settles the child in his arms. The child whimpers and starts to squirm weakly. Zura stares down at him, transfixed.

“Is he... Utsuro or Shoyo?”

“Can’t tell yet, dummy.”

“Ah. Have you given him a name?” Zura sways, gently rocking the child. Gintoki is reminded of the careful but cheerful way Zura treated Kanshichiro, though that kid had been a fair bit older than the infant he’s cradling now.

“Haven’t really. Just been thinking of him as, ‘the kid,’ or some other crap like that.” 

Sometimes he does call the child Shoyo. He's only done that a few times, when the wishful thinking takes control. He’s trying to stop.

“Hm.”

The child's quiet cries soon taper off, and he returns to his fitful rest. Zura holds him to his chest and wears an expression that Gintoki can’t bear to read.

“You falling asleep on your feet there, Zura?”

“It’s not Zura, it’s…” he chokes and cuts himself off. Gintoki looks up in surprise at the unfinished statement and finds thin trails of tears running down his old friend’s face.

“Sensei used to call me Kotaro,” Zura whispers.

He sits down on the inn’s small bed and settles the infant carefully in his lap. Gintoki sprawls beside him in silence. After a while, Zura begins to speak, and it's like a dam has broken and the words are spilling out, here on the dingy wooden floors of the Southwest Inn.

“I never really had the time to mourn for him,” Zura admits. “For Sensei, I mean. Right after what happened, we were still at war, and I couldn't just quit being a general. My men needed me. And every time afterwards, every time I thought of Sensei holding my hand to teach me pen strokes and sword katas, or munching on an onigiri I had made just for him, I also thought of _you_ , Gintoki. And of Takasugi. No matter my bond with Sensei, you loved him more—"

Gintoki frowns. "Don't say it like that, Zura—"

"You _needed_ him more. You were both _broken_ by his death. And I… wasn’t. I thought something was wrong with me. I mean— it hurt; it hurt quite a lot. But I could bear it.” Zura lets out a humorless laugh. "I'd already lost my family once."

Gintoki shuffles closer and slings an arm around Zura’s shoulder. He’s terrible with emotions and that sort of stuff, but Zura knows that, and he knows that Zura knows it, so he’s determined to just do the best he can. Zura leans into his arm.

“I tried to— to become Sensei's replacement, during those last legs of the war," Zura continues. "Because Sakamoto wasn’t there to be our heart anymore, either, and thank the stars he escaped, but... Well. And then you were both gone, too. And I _still_ didn’t let myself mourn. I thought— no matter how much I’m suffering now, _they’re_ suffering more. Gintoki and Takasugi have it so much worse. I have no right to complain, because at least I had my parents and my grandmother for a short while. All _they_ ever had was Sensei and now he’s gone—"

Gintoki can’t take this any more. He stands, lifts the infant from Zura’s arms, and sets him back in the cot— Zura gives a halfhearted protest but lets go without issue. And then Gintoki strides back over to Zura and wraps himself around the other man: his friend, his comrade, his brother, his first family. He pulls Zura tight against him and now the tables are turned and it’s him keeping Zura upright as the other man cries silently into Gintoki’s sweat-stained travel robes.

“It’s not a fucking competition to see how tragic our backstories can get,” Gintoki mutters.

“I know.”

“And it wasn’t just Sensei, either.”

“What?”

“Sensei wasn’t the only one we had. We had _you,_ Zura. You had just as much of a right to be his student as anyone else. You were just as much our family as anyone else. Don’t you _dare_ think otherwise. Stupid wig.”

Zura doesn’t even protest the nickname. He sniffs; Gintoki’s arms tighten around him.

“I loved Sensei too,” Zura says in a small voice.

“I know you did. As much as any of us. You’re just stronger than me or Bakasugi. You kept it together back then, when we couldn’t.”

“ _Because_ you couldn’t.” Zura sniffs again and buries his face into Gintoki’s shoulder.

Gintoki looks up at the damp, cracked ceiling. Looks like rain could drip through it at any moment, really. He waits till he’s certain Zura's fine, then shoves him away.

“Oi, don’t go wiping your snot on my clothes, you hear me?”

A watery chuckle from the other man. “I’m fairly certain my suit is worth many times more than the rags you’re wearing.”

Gintoki takes this as a challenge. He picks his nose and tries to flick the snot at Zura, who yelps and dodges. Yet the dodge proves unnecessary as, due to a grave miscalculation, the snot lands right back on Gintoki’s own overrobe. He glares at it, then looks pointedly at Zura.

“Ah, this is your fault, Zura. What’s a poor man to do when the very clothes on his back are ruined? Perhaps the Prime Minister will expense me a new outfit?”

“Don’t be stupid, Gintoki, that would blow my cover immediately. Besides, that was definitely karma at work there. You deserve it.”

Gintoki grumbles something unintelligible even to himself as he wipes the snot off his robes. Meanwhile, Zura sniffs one last time, then surreptitiously wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and stands up.

“My personal guard will be expecting me. I told them to give me an hour without interrupting, and I do believe my time is almost up.” Zura's lips quirk upwards into a light smile. “I think they assumed I fathered a child out of wedlock, and that I’m here to visit him.”

Gintoki stares at him in mock disbelief. “Eh? What does that make me? Your secret mistress?”

“No. You’re just an idiot perm-head friend. A snot-nosed little brother. And... someone I’d gladly entrust all my hopes to, if I hadn’t done so already.” 

Zura walks past the infant's cot on his way to the door. At sight of the child, he stops in his tracks. He faces Gintoki and visibly steels himself before speaking. His voice is ethereally soft, like he's worried his very words will injure their recipient.

“Gintoki. As much as you may love that child, he isn’t Shoyo, and he’s not likely to become Shoyo either. It might... be safest to kill him now.”

Gintoki lets a sharp laugh escape him. “You think I haven’t tried? I _couldn’t,_ Zura.”

Zura lets out a breath. “I could,” he says, and now, when he speaks, it’s not with the warm, carefree voice of Zura, it's with the frigid air of the Noble Youth of Madness who rallied thousands to salvage a losing war.

“If our worst predictions are realized, he’ll need to be killed. I can kill him right now. You’ve already had to twice over, and I swore I wouldn’t let you again if I could do anything about it.” He hesitates. “So, do you— do you want me to—”

He’s truly asking. Zura, who used to never even break color pencils if he could help it, is trying to take the burden for Gintoki again. But it’s not necessary, this time. Gintoki can handle it.

“No,” says Gintoki firmly, and Zura sighs in relief. “I’m gonna wait to see what it— what he becomes.”

Gintoki goes over to the cot and lifts the child, tucking him securely into the crook of one arm. The child stays quiet, though he's awake now, gazing up at Gintoki with deep red eyes. Gintoki tosses the bundle of supplies on the bed onto his other shoulder— it contains everything he owns: he packs light these days. He’d better go make sure that old lady he’d asked to babysit wasn’t scared shitless by Zura’s guards. And then he’ll get out of here, as fast as he can. The Tendoushuu might have heard of this. They might still come for him. If they’re alive at all.

“Alright, then.” Zura stands at the doorway and pulls the cuffs of his suit out to straighten them, brushes an invisible speck of dirt off his vest. “Take care, Gintoki.”

Gintoki smirks. “You too. Kotaro-kun.”

Zura’s face flashes with surprise, and then he grins wide, like he’s proud of Gintoki. It’s like that time in temple school when Gintoki got a good score on an exam because Zura patiently helped him study with his own color-pencil-outlined notes, and Sensei handed the rest of the exams back while munching happily on a rice ball, and Takasugi jabbed at his own red-marked paper with his ink brush, and Zura smiled and smiled.

“It’s not Kotaro-kun,” Zura says, and his hair flows behind him as he strides through the door.

“It’s Zura.”

**Author's Note:**

> Katsura strolls up to the guards, some of whom are just waking from unconsciousness and look rather groggy. The guards turn to look back at him in unison. However—
> 
> "Intruder!" they shout, aiming their rifles at him. "Who are you? Where's the Prime Minister!?"
> 
> Katsura quirks his head, confused. He _is_ the Prime Minister. Then clarity strikes.
> 
> "Ah. I forgot to put my mustache back on."
> 
> \----
> 
> It’s sad to think that Gintama is well and truly over, and that there won’t be any new chapters or episodes or movies in the future. I’ll miss this wacky universe and its insane cast.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are, as always, very much appreciated and will make me happy.


End file.
